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There are uncountable good reasons to desire an early retirement from public life for George Bush, but his campaign style has to be near the top of the list.
The Bush technique is avoid to making a direct statement. Instead, he provides grist for the gossip mills, in the hope that they'll do his dirty work for him.
Bush hints that when Bill Clinton visited the Soviet Union on a student tour, Clinton may have met with KGB officers. Bush implies that something sinister was arranged.
What was it? Let's try. The KGB sent a brainwashed Bill Clinton back to become governor of Arkansas.
Arkansas is such an influential place that if it fell into the ocean, the major effect would be that we'd have to rename a river. But never mind. Even as the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB managed to control Democratic primaries so that Clinton emerged as the Manchurian candidate.
If elected, what will he do? Resurrect the USSR? Wasn't it Bush who wanted the USSR to stay united under Gorbachev, rather than divide with Yeltsin?
The scenario is too preposterous even for a Richard Condon novel. But if George Bush believes it, why doesn't he say so outright? If Bush believes that every state official who ever visited the Soviet Union is a threat, why hasn't he come to Colorado to rail against Sen. Bill Owens, a conservative Aurora Republican who not only went on Soviet tours, but organized them?
Then there's the Bush claim, concerning Clinton's
participation in anti-Vietnam demonstrations while in
England, that to be in a foreign country and demonstrate
against your own country when it's at war -- that's
wrong.
Our country was not at war. Our Constitution gives Congress sole power to declare war, and there never was such a declaration. In every presidential election, the American public voted against more involvement in Vietnam: LBJ was the peace candidate in 1964, Nixon had a secret plan to end it within a year in 1968, and peace was at hand in 1972.
By the time Clinton demonstrated, nobody in his right
mind
supported the conflict, according to Dan Quayle.
Among those not in their right minds then was a Texas
congressman named George Bush.
But that's past. In the present, George Bush seems to believe that the national security state should be enlarged and further empowered.
If that's his view, he's entitled to it. But he should
say so directly: I believe American citizens abroad
should be kidnapped, brought back and thrown in prison
forever if they demonstrate against any presidential fiat
or ukase, and I will work to that end if I am
re-elected.
Instead, he drops hints and starts rumors, leaving us to guess at what he really believes. Maybe it will work, and we'll believe the worst about Clinton. But there's also a strong chance that we'll start believing the worst about George Bush.
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